Saturday, May 28, 2016

This March Felino A. Soriano began a new series, "Of this Momentum Song." The poem below is forty-second in the series, and he has written it especially for The Song Is... and the contest honoring musicians born in the 1920s. Enjoy! I especially like how Felino conveys the physical act of playing music and the centrality of rhythm.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

B.B. King is among the many musicians born in the 1920s, so I thought I'd repost Rita Marie Recine's tribute to him. I was fortunate enough to see him towards the end of his life, and even though he was sitting in a chair all evening, he gave an inspiring performance.

A salute to BB King

Remembering 16

From Gospel music to the blues.

To you we salute.

Inducted into the hall of fame

Everyone knew your name.

The Thrill is now gone,

With your legendary music we all have won.

Time to rest.

Playing up in heaven with the best.

Formerly known as the three kings.

The thrill is gone.

A salute to BB King .King of blues and jazz

Among other things

The thrill is gone,remembering 16

With your music Mr. King we have won.

You were the champion no one can forget

You were the BOSS.

Played guitar with such class

A legend like no other

Remembering 16

A friend to the music industry.

Your music has touched many lives

Children, father's and mothers

from generation to generation

NO one can replace.

You sang the tune.

Stars, sun , and moon.

remembering 16

Today you play with the best

strumming up above

Janis, Jimi, Elvis to name a few.

Let the good times roll .

in heaven...

The thrill is gone

Remembering 16

As your memory continues day by day

With your music we dance and sway

To have heard your music is to love.

Similar as the the sweet sound of a dove.

You are the legend .

You are the King of Blues and Jazz

your artistry has made people laugh, dance and sing.

You have sung happy birthday.

A celebration , your creation. Mr. King.

From every walk of life .

From the rich and poor.

from generation to generation

you made the world smile.

Remembering 16

Sir you walk with the Lord.

He rejoices in your melodies.

May we all rejoice in harmony for the thrill on earth may be gone

remembering 16 , we have won.

Play up in the heavens with all who have crossed over .

Have a rock n roll heaven, with an abundance of blues

Mr BB King thank you for your music , keeping it real

I believe in forever, Your artistry is genial and will never tarnish,

for our natural life is truly a one night stand.

Remembering 16

ritamarie recine

May 7, 2016

I'll post a few of BB King's performances. First, of course, he and Ruth Brown perform "You're the Boss."

Sunday, May 22, 2016

I really love it when a new-to-me poet submits some poetry and it's about a (slightly) less well known musician. Thank you, Glen Armstrong, for sending along this tribute to Elvin and Philly Joe Jones.

Requiem for Elvin and Philly Joe

I’ve heard bodies

become music / become other bodies

beats

experimental at first then

breathing / catching

asynchronous as all

phantasms must be

until

warming / returning

to a pulse

sometimes at night Pontiac Michigan

and the so-called Badlands

of Philadelphia

echo / ring / divide

as if by hand

and stick

dividing a ride cymbal

into unexpected 3s / galloping 4s

as if these cities

might at any moment

return.

Bio:

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks:Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cream City Review.

With all this emphasis on the drums, I feel like I am back grading papers again, playing lots of drum-heavy YouTube videos to keep me going. (I just can't drink coffee anymore.) But let's take a listen to some videos featuring both Philly Joe Jones and Elvin Jones.

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Tonight I'd like to post Bill Cushing's "On Modest Mussourgsky's 'Bydlo'" -- a poem inspired by one movement of Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite composed in memory of Victor Hartmann, Mussourgsky's close friend, an artist who had died at the age of thirty nine.

ON MODEST MUSSOURGSKY’S
"BYDLO"

A shape appears

and is gone,

comes into view,

disappears, until,

cresting the hill,

the spot

blotting the sun,

a cartload of hay,

takes shape.

Emerging,

the wagon,

oxen-drawn, a juggernaut
pulled

by two thousand pounds,

rolls between fields--

grinding dirt,

crushing stones.

Sweating flanks

of coarse,

matted hair

cause slow,

rhythmic hammering,

dull thunder

as hooves pound earth.

The ground moves

to the sound

of these hardened

timpani.

Beast and wagon pass,

processional,

as if solemn,

and then recede

slowly

out of sight.

A wake is left--

strong pungent odor

of musk

mixed

with the sweet sharpness

of the cut stalks

being carried

to
the village beyond.Here is one of Hartmann's surviving works, a sketch of a clock:

Another is a plan for a city gate in Kiev:

Bill Cushing's bio is below:

I earned an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and currently teach English classes at both Mount San Antonio and East Los Angeles colleges while living in Glendale with my wife and our son.

This piece was inspired by my lifelong love of Mussourgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, a piece of music written in honor of an artist he knew well, which makes my poem a piece of writing inspired by a piece of music that was inspired by a painting. I have embedded an appropriate link below.

I have previously had poems published by Avocet, Brownstone Review, Mayo Review, Metaphor, Penumbra, Spectrum, and West Trade Review. I was a contributor to two recently-released anthologies, Getting Old and the award-winning Stories of Music, vol 1. Also, I am scheduled to appear in volume 2 of the latter anthology.

I'd like to add some new pieces by Will Mayo. Although this spring/summer I've been posting pieces by new-to-The Song Is... authors, I always welcome work by people who've been here before.

Journeyer

by

WillMayo

"My God," Father Merton said one day. "Where am I headed?"

There was no answer. The wind blew still. He kept walking. Ahead in the distance he could see the shifting horizons. Then no more.

Lost!

By

WillMayo

Another one of my recurring dreams is one where I find myself set in what appears every time to be an unfamiliar neighborhood. And I am a child again who longs to return to his childhood home. Walking about the street on which the houses lie I soon comprehend that it is a circular avenue of homes, there are no roads in and there are no roads out. And no one appears to be at home in any of the houses set on immaculate yards. One thing I do know: these are all well to-do homes far beyond the means of me and my simple family. I do not belong here. I am here a boy set at will among the absent strangers of a strange place and that feels wrong, so wrong.

Sighing at my loss, I sit upon the curb of the curving street and ease myself back into dreamless sleep. Only to waken and then dream once more.

hallways

by

WillMayo

Yet always in these wondering, these meanderings of mind there's a hallway to be found. One hallway leads to a desert highway along which I tried to catch a ride. Another to a mountain down whose most treacherous path I slid. Still another to a distant sea where dolphins led me home. And then another to old schoolgrounds, whether the Old College or to the Academy where fundamentalist kids taunted me with “To the Devil you go!” Onward to distant homes I called my own, whether in Maryland or Alabama or to the faraway asylum where they held me caged for a year. But always, always down a long dark hallway of desire...

Unwanted

by

WillMayo

Once again, I tried to befriend a stranger who would prove to be no friend. The wild haired man led me up a winding stair, not to his apartment as he had promised, but to the rooftop of the busy bodega. With a staggering stride, he walked forward to the roof's edge across dried and crumbling tar. He pointed to the street below.

"One day," he said. "I threw a man below. The fall broke every bone in his body."

He paused. Then added:

"What do you think of that?"

"I don't know what to think," I replied matter of factly.

"But does it scare you?" he asked.

"No," I replied.

He then led me away to the stairs. I made my way back down and past an angry storekeeper who didn't want me around either. Ahead, the crowd roared. I made my way forward.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

This morning as I prepare for another day of grading papers I'd like to post some new poems. I am especially pleased to be able to post Sergio A. Ortiz's entries into the Latino/a Culture contest. The pictures above and below are of Mercedes Sosa. For more information about her, see her obituary in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/oct/05/mercedes-sosa-obituary I'll be posting some of her songs below.

Requiem for Mercedes Sosa

Just in case Mercedes returns,

in case a bombó or a zampoña bring her back,

maybe she’ll return in the gallop of a chacarera,

or in the swell of a samba.

Hopefully a tango brings her back.

And if, once and for all, the songs she left,

the palpitations, the flora and fauna (happy

to have been conceived by the voice

of La Negra) bring her back: that is to say,

in case an airplane doesn’t,

or yet another concert, and even then,

Mercedes returns with her pure voice purer,

with her unadulterated voice

capable of making bread or birds appear;

and just in case Mercedes does return.

I’m buying two front seats,

one to sit down and watch her,

another one to dance and sing

until I’ve been revived.

Latino/a Culture is more than just music as this next poem "Yellow Flowers" shows:

Yellow Flowers

I saw flowers in mi abuelasgarden,

perhaps they were not flowers,

maybe they were candy, my childhood,

yellow memories, lips, time,

little piles of light, echoes of the sun

immersed in darkness, golden orioles perching

in the air or on the stems;

I saw flowers and possibly not flowers,

Perchance it was mi abuela,

my grandmother in yellow,

in multiple portraits,

portraits in the petals.

I told you,

they beat us

now come down

from that cross

and follow me

Short Bio:

Sergio A. Ortiz is the founding editor of Undertow Tanka Review. His collections of Tanka, For the Men to Come (2014), and From Life to Life (2014) were released by Amazon. He’s a two time Pushcart nominee and a four time Best of the Web nominee. His poems have been publish in over four hundred journals and anthologies.